Noone Time At Irish Fest Will Be Return To The '60s

Music

March 15, 1996|By Parry Gettelman Sentinel Popular Music Critic

''This is the famous Irish singer Peter Noone,'' the caller said with a laugh.

Well, he is famous, and he does have Irish ancestors, but Peter Noone isn't exactly Paddy O'Brien or even the fifth Clancy Brother. Noone hails from the north of England, whence sprang his band, Herman's Hermits, at the height of the British Invasion.

Noone is a big fan of Celtic-punk band the Pogues, but he said, actually, their songs might not be ideally suited to a celebration.

''They're all about wars and things,'' Noone said. ''Actually, when I play Ireland, the Herman's Hermits songs are good enough. They seem popular.''

Herman's Hermits had their first big hit with ''Can't You Hear My Heart Beat'' in 1964. The group went on to sell millions of records all over the world. Its long string of top-selling singles included ''Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter,'' ''Henry VIII, I Am,'' ''There's a Kind of Hush'' and ''Just a Little Bit Better.'' Noone said he will perform mostly Herman's Hermits material at the Irish festival.

''That's what people want to hear,'' he said from his home in Santa Barbara, Calif. ''One time, I went to an Elvis show and asked him why he didn't do 'Jailhouse Rock.' He said, 'If I did all my songs, I'd be onstage for five hours.' I've only got 22 or something, so I do them all!''

Depending on the length of his set, Noone said, he'll throw in some other material as well. He had just returned from an Australian tour where he performed two-hour shows, so he worked in a song he had recorded with his daughter called ''Angels Crying in Heaven,'' as well as a Bobby Darin song and even a song by his old chart rivals, the Beatles - ''If I Fell in Love With You.''

Noone said the Beatles' success made it possible for Herman's Hermits to name their own terms when they started recording. Record companies were desperate to find their own answer to the Beatles, so Herman's Hermits were able to make albums without signing away their artistic license.

''The Beatles said, 'You make sure you stay independent, so you can always do what you want to do.' They'd had to fight for their independence. Luckily, they got George Martin, who trusted them. . . . The Beatles had just rewritten the whole book on the way things were gonna be done, and we were there just in their shadow.''

The Beatles, of course, played a much more important role in musical history than Herman's Hermits. But if you were a kid in the '60s, Herman's Hermits were just as much fun. Some of the band's tunes were based on English pub songs - perfect schoolbus sing-alongs.

''There's not so many words in 'Henry VIII' as in 'Strawberry Fields Forever,' '' Noone agreed.

''What happened was my 'competitors' all already had a piece of business that they did. The Beatles had great songs and wore leather jackets and smoked cigarettes on stage. The Stones did that sort of American R&B thing, and the Dave Clark Five did that clean rock 'n' roll stuff. So I went for an accent. Every record had an accent, but they weren't all my accent. I did 'Henry VIII' with a Cockney accent, 'Mrs. Brown' with a Manchester accent, and 'Leaning On the Lamp Post' was a Yorkshire accent.''

Noone said he learned that approach when he was a boy and his grandfather took him to see all the stars of the English music hall stage. He was particularly taken with a singer who called himself Adolph Littler.

''He'd say, 'My name's Adolph 'Itler - with an L of a difference.' And he sang each song in a different accent,'' Noone recalled.

When Noone was small, he also liked any kind of American music. He started with big-band music from his father's collection and began hearing rock 'n' roll in about 1961 when his older sister started buying her own records.

''She had very good taste in music, thank God,'' Noone said. ''Buddy Holly I liked, Elvis Presley, and any romantic music my sister played - the romantic rock songs of the '60s by Dion and Chuck Berry. . . . I had the same sort of musical education Paul McCartney had. But he used his a bit better! Our families were into music, and that's important, to learn the music of three generations before you. It definitely gives you a bigger pool to draw from.''

Noone said his own 8-year-old daughter is more musically intelligent than he is.

''She can learn to play instruments and read music,'' he said proudly. ''I was an entertainer. She's a musician.''